How This Class Can Help My Future

Hello Everybody,

This is my last and final post for the IEOR 190G Patent Engineering class at U.C. Berkeley. It is a bittersweet moment because I have worked all semester for this moment and have learned so much about patents. Going into my future work, I look forward to taking all that I have learned and applying it one day in the real world. I am an Economics major minoring in IEOR and Computer Science. One day, I hope to develop something worthwhile and so innovative that I could file a patent. This summer, I will likely be doing some work with a start up in the gaming industry which is trying to determine how to approach IP and the need for patents or not. Ideally, I will be able to help since I have developed this background over the past semester learning about obviousness, novelty, and prior art. Also, I like that we have created a blog because that allows us to have something visible to future employers should they look us up and be interested in what type of work we have done in regard to patents. I will add the link to my LinkedIn account and hopefully some people end up reading these posts. In the future, I think this knowledge will put me one step ahead of the competition because of the skills I have acquired about patents and how they work. I am very excited to patent something of my own and be the very first to file and go through all the necessary steps in receiving the patent. Thank you to all that have been a part of this class, I have learned so much from you input on my blog and YouTube videos and look forward to taking more classes in the IEOR department as to better my information about patents and the tech industry in general. The tech industry has always been of interest because my father works in it and I think it would be a fantastic place to start my career. This summer, I will be working in real estate in San Francisco and hopefully get some hands on experience with the tech industry that surrounds us. Thanks again to the professor!

What I Learned From This Class

Hello Everyone,

I am sad that this class is over but I am glad that I will be taking so much knowledge with me into the future about how patents work and how to file and read through one on my own. First, I thought it was interesting how we started off the semester learning about the top 10 inventions ever and how each person had their own ideas about what they thought were the coolest top 10 inventions as opposed to what Dr. Lavian thought were the top 10. Then, we dove into what makes up a patent and what it takes to get one. Learning about obviousness was pretty interesting to me because I was curious about how dumb a patent could be and still get patented but this curiosity was quenched with the silly patent research homework assignment. Next up, I learned a lot about prior art and what it means to be novel. Prior art is all the prior patents and public documentation regarding the patent so this could be books, designs in textbooks, previous patents, or anything really. If it has already been done before it is not patentable. You can patent on improvements though which was good to know that if someone patented a chair then you couldn't patent the chair minus a leg but you could patent the chair with a new addition that has never been thought of before and is actually novel. Overall, what I will take from this class is how to file a patent, how to read through a patent and find infringement, and finally how to work with patents in my future career. This class was so helpful in creating this foundation and for creating an interest me in patents in general. I know so much more than I did before this class and was initially intimidated by the idea of patents and learning about their intricacies but now that I know, I feel like I can go out get a team and file something useful. Thank you to our Professor Tal Lavian for all the work he put in creating this class and the stimulating homework assignments. 

Collaborative Social Media: Final Installment

Continuing off what I was talking about earlier, this class didn't have any midterms which made it less stressful and actually allowed the students to learn in a stress free environment and focus on what they found to be most important to the class. Before this class, I had never had a Twitter, a blog, a Youtube channel, nor a Google+ yet somehow I ended the class with all of those. The Twitter was instrumental in getting instant feedback from peers in the class and getting a sense of what everyone thought about each video. I liked it most when we were all live tweeting in class about the TED talk videos because it allowed me to get a feel for what the fellow students were thinking about when watching the videos and also what stuck with them the most. Posting tweets felt unfamiliar at the start but I came to enjoy putting my thoughts out there especially when it came to patents. A lot of random people started following my Twitter account because of this talk about patents and the hashtag we were using.
The blog is something I thought I would never make unless people really encouraged me to make a travel blog. However, that day has not come but instead I have made one about patents! The blog was very interesting because you could create your own backdrop and get your own feel to it and see how the other people in the class decided to make theirs look. The comments on the blogs were useful because they helped me decide how to structure the rest of my blogs and videos. Many people commented that the black was hard to read with my backdrop so now I type in red. Small changes can go a long way. Being collaborative is new but it was instrumental in getting a better grasp on patent engineering because as a 3 unit student, you learn a lot from watching so many videos of classmates and posting so many comments it was actually quite helpful. 

The YouTube was helpful in creative confidence and seeing how you look to future employers. 

Collaborative Social Media: Installment 1

Hello Everyone!

This is Kyle Jackson here for the last assignment and I am going to go into what my thoughts are about the collaborative social media. First and foremost, it felt odd. I say this because at the start of the class I found it just plain awkward to start into the webcam hole and talk as if there were someone staring back at me who needed to know about patents. The YouTube videos were quite terrible at the start and I dreaded them each week. After some time, I became more comfortable in front of the camera and actually enjoyed posting a little about patents here and there. The collaborative aspect of the class was most interesting for me in terms of the YouTube comments. These comments on my posts were the most informative in giving me feedback on how I could improve my blog and try harder in the future. I liked learning from others in general because it was something I had never really done here before. 

Typically in Berkeley, classes of 3 units are two lectures and a discussion but here it was just one long Monday night lecture and no discussion. Instead, the discussion actually happened online where we were all commenting on each others videos and blogs as well as making some of our own. I really enjoyed watching other people's work because each has their own sense of style and artisanship that is unparalleed. I like how this class went above and beyond to integrate ourselves through collaboration. For most classes, there are midterms which you have to cram for. Dr. Lavian was good about emphasizing that he wants us to "cheat" and "take the best" of each other's work so that we can learn from the best.